'Tis a shame, though a good life lived. I was 5 when Apollo 11 landed; my parents woke me for the actual landing (a little after midnight, EDT) and of course for Neil coming down the ladder later that morning.

My generation has had several "where were you" moments. Apollo 11 was the only happy one, so that's the one I'll keep in my book.

'Tis a shame, though a good life lived. I was 5 when Apollo 11 landed; my parents woke me for the actual landing (a little after midnight, EDT) and of course for Neil coming down the ladder later that morning.

My generation has had several "where were you" moments. Apollo 11 was the only happy one, so that's the one I'll keep in my book.

I was also 5, but I have virtually no memory of the event. I remember it in general terms, but not the actual event as it was taking place. Nonetheless, I'm sad for the loss of Neil Armstrong. RIP

To put things in perspective with all the complaining we do about how our computers aren't good enough, just remember that he piloted the moon landing using the command module and Lunar Module's Apollo Guidance Computer computer that had:-- about a 1 MHz internal clock speed for its CPU (a 2 MHz crystal was used and divided numerous times to provide the clock for the CPU, communication busses, and various other components)-- The CPU was a lovely 16 bits (15 bits effective in memory with 1 parity bit and numerically 14 bits effective with an overflow bit and the parity bit)-- A 16 bit data bus that ran at the blazing frequency of 0.5 MHz-- 2048 words of RAM (~4 kilobytes)-- 36K words of ROM that stored the system software (~72 kilobytes)-- But hey! It did have a power-saving mode: The astronauts could manually drop the guidance computer into a "sleep" mode that used ~10 watts instead of 70 Watts. Apparently the feature was never actually used during flight though.

So basically, your Arduino project has more oomph that what got Neil Armstrong to the moon.

Of course, there's one little thing that no extreme Intel or AMD box with massive CPU coolers and quad-graphics has: The training, skill, and outright heroism of Neil Armstrong, all the other astronauts, and the whole NASA program that got them to the moon. Godspeed Neil Armstrong!

It's strange for me to know this man is no longer alive. I wasn't yet alive when he took those famous first steps yet growing up it was ingrained in me that this was an American victory and not something so easily done. As I got older and came to realize just what a feat this was in light of the technology available and I feel like I owe him something. All I can really say is thank you for having the courage and the conviction to do what you did. You are a hero.